Great Days of Colombo, the story of our bustling city!

Today, Colombo is the hotspot for literally everything, whether it be fashion, food, partying or trends (to name a few). But it is easily forgotten as to how this huge commercialised city came about. Before Colombo was known as the largest city in Sri Lanka, it held countless memories and nostalgia to many of the older generations. Asiff Hussein takes the reader on a journey down the aisles of history to the origins of what Colombo is all about. Whether it be a young reader trying to discover the wonders of this city or an older reader walking down memory lane to be reemerged in the wonder years of Colombo, this book has been beautifully written to make you want to look at Colombo in a new perspective. To have a deeper understanding of what the book is about, we had a chat with Asiff. Here’s what he had to say!

Tell us a bit about your journey as an author. What role has your background in journalism played in this journey?

I guess Journalism and authorship go hand in glove.  Journalism is something I had a passion for ever since my young days. The adventures of Tintin which I loved as a kid must have had something to do with it, I guess. When I enrolled for a Diploma in Journalism in Aquinas College while still in my teens, I was fortunate to have that doyen of journalism Reggie Michael to lecture and mentor us. What a man. He taught us the basics from which we could build up a career, simple things like “Facts are Sacred but Comment is Free” and “A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words”. Simple things but very impressionable on a young mind.

I joined the Sunday Times as a cub reporter, and as time went by, I took a keen interest in Sociology and went for a BA Degree in Social Sciences at the Open University of Sri Lanka, and before long I released my first book ‘The Lion and the Sword’ at The Royal Asiatic Society, which despite its seemingly jingoistic title was actually a detailed study of our country’s peoples and languages. I later expanded on that and retitled it as ‘Zeylanica; A Study of the Peoples and Languages of Sri Lanka’.

Other books followed including ‘Sarandib’. ‘An Ethnological Study of the Muslims of Sri Lanka’, the most comprehensive study of our country’s Muslims; ‘Caste in Sri Lanka’, again the most detailed study of our country’s caste system; and ‘Ivilly Pevilly’. ‘The Gastronome’s Guide to the Culinary History and Heritage of Sri Lanka’, to make a good job of which I did a Post-Graduate Diploma in Archaeology offered by Kelaniya University, for the simple reason that I wanted to be thorough with the food habits of prehistoric man.

I subsequently released two more books ‘Mystique Island’, about the unsolved mysteries of our country, and ‘Thirty Shades of Taprobane’, about our strange customs and beliefs.

What is the most rewarding thing about being an author?

I guess it’s the satisfaction of knowing that people are reading your books, appreciating them and benefitting from that knowledge. It’s not so much the monetary benefit because that’s peanuts compared to the opportunity cost, by which I mean the cost of foregoing other opportunities that come your way. I guess I have spent over three years on each of my four major works Zeylanica, Sarandib, Caste in Sri Lanka and Ivilly Pevilly. So that’s a huge opportunity cost compared to the royalty of ten percent paid by the publisher.

However, let’s remember once you produce a book, you own the copyright meaning the right to publish and benefit from your book through subsequent editions, or even publish them in abridged form or put them on Amazon and so on. Such copyright lasts your entire lifetime and many more years from which your children could benefit. So I guess the monetary benefits are long term and lasting.

What inspired you to write ‘The Great Days of Colombo’?

Although I was born in Kandy, Colombo is where I was raised ever since my early childhood. Both my parental homes were in the old Colpetty area – my father’s family home ‘Darlington’ in Alwis Place and my mother’s family home ‘Chitrangi’ in General’s Lake Road which had by then come to be regarded as part of Slave Island. This very happening childhood left a very lasting and favourable impression on me and my siblings though we later moved to Ratmalana.

But the actual inspiration for writing it came from a series of articles I did for an online magazine on the Big Five of Colombo- Fort, Slave Island, Colpetty, Bambalapitiya and Wellawatte which were very well received and shared countless times on social media. That made me think, what if I were to do a book on Colombo, a very big book, something like the bumper book on Boxing my father used to have, a pictorial history of the sport really, with its striking yellow dust jacket. So now you know why ‘The Great Days of Colombo’ has a yellow cover. I had already decided on it when I started writing the book.

When it was over within a couple of years, the content including the text, hundreds of photographs, maps, paintings and artists’ sketches and impressions, came to over 800 pages and the printing of the work was going to be very costly. The publisher could of course not be expected to bear such a high cost and I already had in mind a company that could sponsor it, one whose story reflected the story of Colombo.

That was Expolanka, whose CEO, the indefatigable Hanif Yusoof had taken it to such great heights. He was very keen on the company making a meaningful contribution to our heritage and what’s better than sponsoring a work that focused on the heritage of the great city where that great company itself had its origins. His response was so positive that I did not have to look for any other sponsor.

In a nutshell what is this book about? What can the readers expect?

It’s all about Colombo, how it evolved from a minor port town to become the capital of Colombo under colonial rule. It also traces its history down the years from colonial rule to the World War II years and beyond.

It also covers Colombo Port, Beira Lake and Galle Face as well as all zones of Colombo from Fort to Mutwal, how these areas became absorbed into Colombo, how these place names and street names originated, the older residences and businesses that emerged there and plentiful interesting happenings that took place over the years including historical events, wartime facts. Tales of horror and terror, mysteries and various forms of entertainment the city came to provide. In fact, it takes an older generation on a walk down memory lane and even jogs their memories while giving much imagination to younger people how wonderful life must have been in those carefree days.

What are some of the challenges you had to face when writing and publishing this book? How did you overcome them?

The first challenge to any aspiring writer would be to find a publisher willing to publish the work. I was very fortunate in this because my first printer (my first book was self-published) later took to publishing and offered to publish my books as well, which meant that they would print the books at their cost, promote it, market it, distribute it in bookshops etc. and give me a royalty of 10 percent off the cover price for every book sold.

Thus, from the very beginning I had a very positive publisher in Neptune Publications headed by the enterprising Dinesh Kulatunge who was willing to publish any book I turned out and take the risk as well.  All my books of course turned out to be successful fully vindicating that trust he had placed in me. In fact, I would say it is the thought that there is a ready and willing publisher to publish your work that is the greatest incentive to keep on writing. In my case that has certainly been so.

What are three pieces of advice you could give aspiring young authors?

The most important thing is to make your book fast selling. So you need to be very selective about the subject you choose to write about. You need to focus on something that has never been written about before, or if it has been, you need to bring in fresh insights or cover it as comprehensively as possible.

All my books have done this, but there are two which are actually the fastest selling, the Great Days of Colombo and Caste in Sri Lanka. Why that is so, you would have to ask the readers themselves, but my guess is that they have sentimental value and/or have to do with one’s roots and family heritage. People are still very much sentimental creatures at heart longing to delve into the past, relive the good old times and search for their ultimate roots, wherever they may be.

Another important thing to bear in mind is to make your content appealing. To do this, you have to have the reader in mind, what he or she would find engaging and appealing, and not what you think is important. Always bear in mind it is the reader you are writing for, not yourself.

Finally, make sure to find a publisher who is willing to give you a good deal and promote your book. There have been great books that have been rejected by conceited publishers having preconceived ideas of what a book should be like, but which later turned out to be best sellers because one good publisher recognised its worth and took a chance on it. Make sure you approach such a publisher, but for that you first have to produce a decent work.

How can people follow your work? And from where could we get a copy of The Great Days of Colombo?

I have a blog, Asiffhussein.com, where one could access my writings on all manner of things, from anthropology and linguistics to culture, heritage and religion.  The books I have authored are also described in detail with book reviews, testimonials and citations.

My latest book on Colombo can be purchased from Barefoot, Paradise Road or Vijitha Yapa. It’s actually a very limited edition with only 300 copies in the market, half of which have probably been sold already. So it’s best to go grab a copy at your earliest. After all, it’s my fastest selling book by far.

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